The invention relates to tires or solid wheels for wheel sets of rail vehicles.
In a high-speed wheel-rail system, efforts have been in progress for many years to improve the quality of the tires or solid wheels. In particular, the initial out-of-roundness of new tires and solid wheels, their high level of nonuniform wear, which has further compounded that initial out-of-roundness, as well as the nonhomogeneous microstructural properties of the steel have given rise to much research and attempts at improvement. In this context, reference is made to the Deutsche Bahn AG Technical Report TV9410 A of December 1997, together with the earlier research reports cited therein.
Published documents DE 4,234,192 and EP 0,717,123 have disclosed solutions for selecting an optimized wheel material in the wheel-rail system.
The European draft standard prEN 13262 (June 1998) Rail Applications xe2x80x94Wheelsets and Bogies xe2x80x94Wheels xe2x80x94Product Requirements has specified the steels which are to be used for rail system tires and solid wheels throughout Europe. Despite compliance with this standard, the above problems, such as nonuniform wear, excessive wear, crack susceptibility and nonhomogeneity in the steel microstructure, have not been solved.